McDaniel.

Bosch.

James McDaniel gets sentenced today. McDaniel, of course, is the smooth-talking, purple-suit-wearing rogue Dallas underground-poker-room-operator/drug-dealer convicted in June for contributing to the overdose death of SMU coed Meaghan Bosch. Good money says he will go to prison for the rest of his life … as he was already on parole after serving 20 years for the murder of a former Dallas cop before he got into the underground poker scene. Jurors in the Bosch case were not told his past murder conviction, nor were they allowed to consider allegations from up to a dozen young women claiming they were drugged and raped inside his poker room, some of them apparently on video.

UPDATE: McDaniel did indeed get life. He is currently in custody at Seagoville’s federal prison, but will likely be sent to a less comfortable state prison to finish out his old murder sentence before being sent back to Seagoville for his time on Bosch’s death.

Oscarsson.

Meanwhile, Swedish police are still looking for clues around Europe in the murder of PokerListings founder Andreas Oscarsson. They’ve concluded that indeed his killing was carefully planned by a professional hitman — with his family home fully staked out, exits noted, etc. … allowing the killer to break into the house and fire six silenced shots into Oscarsson and then leave without waking his six family members also asleep in the house that night. And while no motive has been disclosed, apparently investigators have unearthed at least a few death threats against him. and possibly have ruled out some Latvians.

Click here and here for Google translations of the latest from Hungarian news reports.

Dean.

Urch.

And Daniel Dean will get a new trial in the death of fellow amateur poker player Mark Urch. The two players were involved in a drunken dispute over hands in an Australian amateur pub tourney, and when they took matters outside, Dean leveled Urch with a single punch to the head, a blow that caused his death a couple days later. Australian courts sentenced Dean to seven years for manslaughter (eligible for release in May 2011). However, an appeals court threw out the conviction last month and ordered a retrial, on the grounds that the judge may have misinformed the jury about provocation and self-defense matters of law.

There’s a Daniel Dean support group on Facebook.

Cop-killer-turned-Dallas-underground-game-operator (and alleged Choctaw colluder) James McDaniel’s trial in the death of 21-year-old SMU coed Meaghan Bosch is supposed to get underway this week, but has been temporarily delayed. In an effort to put one of the more, er … colorful characters from the Dallas poker scene behind bars for life, prosecutors will make the case that underground poker in Dallas (circa 2006-07) was a breeding ground for drug crimes, rape, and ultimately … an unfortunate, untimely death.

Update from the Morning News:

Monday’s trial of the ex-con accused of causing the overdose death of Southern Methodist University student Meaghan Bosch has been postponed, the judge ordered Thursday.

James McDaniel’s defense attorney, Thomas Mills Jr., is ill, according to court documents. No new date has been set. McDaniel faces up to life in prison if convicted of charges that he supplied Bosch, 21, of McKinney, with drugs that caused her death. She was found dead May 14, 2007, in a portable toilet at a construction site near Waco. Her death followed two other fatal overdoses of SMU students, prompting criticism that the university was ignoring a severe drug problem.

Prosecutors say that McDaniel drugged and raped other female SMU students who attended his underground poker games near campus and that they plan to call some of them to testify. McDaniel also supplied students with drugs, prosecutors allege.

McDaniel, a convicted murderer and self-described professional poker player, has denied he caused Bosch’s death. He also denies selling drugs or committing sexual assaults.

We try not to engage in too much schadenfreude here at Pokerati, but the last post about Amarillo Slim’s efforts to restore his stature in the poker world has me contriving a poll in my head about who are/were the most undesirable people in/from poker.

Current Poker Sith Lords
Russ Hamilton — guilty til proven innocent, and with good cause.
Ernie Scherer III — he’s still innocent til proven guilty, but considering that he faces the death penalty for killing his parents to pay off poker debts — and the last 10 Google searches found on his computer were “countries that don’t extradite to the U.S.“, I think we can rest assured that he will not become a Full Tilt pro anytime soon.

Dishonorable Mentions
James McDaniel — this Dallas poker room operator was convicted of killing an ex-cop, engaged in collusion in Oklahoma (my personal observation and unproven accusation), and is currently on trial for supplying drugs to one of his railbirds who ended up OD’d-dead in a portable toilet.

Reformed Reputations
Jamie Gold
Justin Bonomo
Dutch Boyd

Jury Still Out
David Sklansky — technically crime-free, but young aspiring female players are hardly flocking to his tutelage.
Amarillo Slim — he says he’s not guilty, and his family and a lie detector now apparently agree, even though his criminal record implies otherwise.
Layne Flack — everybody seems to like Layne, but unless he’s working undercover a la Poker Brasco, hanging with Russ Hamilton surely won’t help him get sponsored by Ultimate Bet.

So who else? Really, I’m not looking for a bunch of potentially libelous name-calling … but I am looking to create a list of once and future poker bad-guys, and maybe a rating system for criminals and outcasts and offenses that may or may not attract the attention of law enforcement, but still result in scorn and contempt from fellow poker players.

Those of us who may or may not have taken pleasure in throwing a killer-turned-colluder-turned-killer-again under the bus can breathe a slight sigh of relief, knowing there’s one less person out there who might want to do us harm, with his release from prison now looking virtually impossible.

James McDaniel (aka “Black James”) has had eight new charges pressed against him — including [accessory to the?] murder of Meaghan Bosch. If you recall, he was a suspect in the SMU coed/railbird-hottie’s gruesome death, but it was only parole violations that sent the underground poker room operator back to prison (for eight additional years on his ex-cop-killing sentence).

He goes to trial on the new charges in February.

I hate to mix poker talk with murder, but considering that Meaghan gave her life, I have no problem knowing I’ll never get a chance to get back the $300-$400 he stole from me at Choctaw. Ha ha! Fuck you, you Queens-cracking, colluding cheating bitch! Karma, dude.

Cuong in Texas writes in with some beefs about a casino poker room in Oklahoma:

I was hoping you could shed some light on the Terrible Competence of Choctaw Casino. First, they lie about the numbers at the Choctaw Open, then will not publish results in Card Player, Etc or Send any other results to Poker groups on there Large Tournaments. I have contacted Managers and was told they were busy???WTF..Winstar always takes care of this quickly. I need results listed so my Investor can verify numbers. I will never play other Tournament at Choctaw Casino again. Please write a story on Choctaw so I can get others stories. Thank you,

Thank you … Can you tell us a little more about the numbers they supposedly lied about?

I do indeed have a story about Choctaw that I sadly haven’t finished writing yet. The last time I was there, I ran into Black James and his crew, who were extra-friendly with the poker room management. They took their seats at a 1/2 table (unable to convince us to play 2/5) and proceeded to remove more than half the money from the table in 45 minutes by doing a hyper-bet-collusion hit-and-run. That was obvious to me, and I suspect but can’t prove there might have been a little more than collusion going on when James’ no-look bet got an all-in reraise from my pocket queens and he pretended to be shocked to discover he had pocket kings.

Not at all suggesting Choctaw was in on any unethical behavior, but poker room operators were watching the action, so if they weren’t part of it, then what does that say about their ability to notice/put a stop to cheating. (James McDaniel, of course, is now back in prison for a parole violation connected to the deaths of a police officer and SMU coed.)

Anyone else have any Choctaw stories?

In the meantime, Cuonger, below are the results for the 2008 Choctaw Open, held last month in Durant, sent in by a fellow Pokeratizen:
More…

According to his voicemail, James McDaniel was in Shreveport for the WSOP as police were looking for him. He said something about a satellite — so I dunno, maybe true, even though the current WSOP Circuit event was being held in New Orleans. But according to WSOP sources, he was not registered for any tournaments there.

OK, sorry … am burying the lede. Point of this post is that McDaniel, one of the more notorious figures in mid-stakes Dallas poker, was arrested last night at a University Park apartment. He was unconscious at the time (?) and transported to Parkland Hospital. More info here.

McDaniel’s arrest was not directly related to the death of SMU coed Meaghan Bosch, but was for parole violations and an alleged sexual assault in December 2005.

UPDATE: More detailed telling of this story here.

Police busted through the doors of another Dallas poker room on Thursday — this time not to round up a bunch of low-stakes misdemeanor offenders, but rather to serve a warrant on a convicted cop-killer wanted in connection with the death of Meaghan Bosch, the 21-year-old SMU coed whose lifeless body was found disposed of in a portable toilet last week.

Click here to read the kinda scary story by Jason Trahan in The Dallas Morning News.

James McDaniel, who ran what Dallas players knew as “James’ Game,” admitted to having lunch with Bosch around the same time she sent her friends a text message saying she was with her drug dealer, shortly before she disappeared. Not sure who conducted the raid on McDaniels’ poker room — the Texas Rangers are taking the lead on this investigation, not DPD — but he was not there, nor was he at his house in Pleasant Grove, and is now apparently on the lam.

So much more to this story … developing.

CLARIFICATION: McDaniel was convicted of killing an ex-Dallas police officer in 1978, not one on active duty.

TO BE FAIR: Sources of unknown reliability are telling Pokerati there may be evidence supporting claims of innocence for that crime. Hmm, a black man falsely convicted of murder some 25+ years ago in Texas? Yep, certainly plausible enough … just as it would be that an assertion of “didn’t do it” is a bluff.